The Honorary Consul [DVD]

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Great performances from Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins, not so great from Richard Gere but a good supporting cast make this an enjoyable hour and three quarters entertainment.

The staff of Variety wrote that "strong talents on both sides of the camera haven’t managed to breathe life into this intricate tale of emotional and political betrayal and [the] result is a steady dose of tedium. Retitled from The Honorary Consul and sold in America with one of Paramount’s sleaziest ad campaigns, John MacKenzie and Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of a Graham Greene novel features a fine Michael Caine performance, but prefers to stress sex scenes between star Richard Gere and Elpidia Carrillo.

The Honorary Consul is a much more complicated, mysterious work than one might suspect from this rather literal if quite faithful condensation. They intend to ransom the ambassador for the release of political prisoners in Paraguay, including Plarr's father. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Eduardo Plarr is an unmarried medical doctor of English descent who, as a boy, fled to Buenos Aires with his Paraguayan mother to escape the political turmoil of Paraguay. The action is based upon a book by Graham Greene, a morality tale in which Greene shows how a seemingly mild injustice leads to catastrophic consequences for an apparently innocent man.

He determines that the patient is in no danger from the morphine, but informs Leon that the person they kidnapped is not the American ambassador: he is Fortnum, the British consul. Army paratroopers surround the hut while the failed priest, Rivas, conducts a makeshift mass inside with the rain coming down. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. When the police deadline is about to expire, Plarr goes out to talk with them, with Leon shooting him in his leg. Now a practicing doctor in a small Argentinian city, Plarr is approached by an old friend who tells him he's working with the Paraguayan underground and a disgraced British counsel (Michael Caine) on a plan to kidnap an ambassador and hold him for ransom in exchange for the release of Parr's father and several other prisoners.

Fortnum overhears Plarr telling Leon of his adultery with Clara and saying that he, not Fortnum, is the father of the child that Clara is expecting. The story is set in the provincial city of Corrientes, part of the Argentine Littoral, on the shore of the Paraná River. As a boy, he was forced to flee his native Paraguay after the arrest and subsequent disappearance of his father, a dissident. The book was made into the 1983 film The Honorary Consul (also released as Beyond the Limit), directed by John Mackenzie, with Richard Gere as Plarr and Michael Caine as Fortnum.